MS Word Mail Merge From Whipple Hill

Completing a Mail Merge involves the following steps:

1. Open the List in Whipple Hill and modify it to produce the grades / school year that you want in your mailing.
2. Export the list to an Excel Document
3. Open the excel file:
   1. Fix the zip codes
   2. Change the sort order (optional)
   3. Save as a CSV file
4. Merge the csv file into a word document

Note: If you don't have your own list of addresses in Whipple Hill, copy my template and save it as your own:

I have created a list called "Student Mailing" and given all admin assistants "Copy / Run" access to it. Select "copy" and name it something you will remember. Save it in a category that is easy to find.

Step 1:Modify your list to get the grades and year that you want

• Open the list and click the Filters tab.
• Under Roles, select Students, Incoming Students, or both
• Under School year, select the school year to correspond to the grades you will select
• Under Grade Level Description select all of the grades that you want included in the mailing

Step 2: Export your list to an Excel file.

• Be sure to save any changes that you made
• Click Run
• Click Export -- Remember where you are saving the file

Step 3: Fix the zip codes and save as CSV

• Open the file in Excel. You will get an error indicating that the file format doesn't match the extension. That's okay.
• Select the column with the zip code. Right click on the selected column. Choose Cell Format.
• Under "special," pick zip code format. This will replace any leading zeros that were stripped off.
• Go to File>>Save As. Choose CSV or Comma Separated Values as the file type
• Save the document in a place you can remember. You will need to locate this file when you merge it with your word document.

Step 4: Merge your file into your Word Document (PC):

• Open a new document in MS Word.
• From the toolbar, select Mailings
  • Start Mail Merge
    • Letters
  • Select Recipients
    • Use an Existing List
      • Browse to the location where you saved the csv version of the Excel file you exported from Whipple Hill and select it.
  • You can type your letter or copy and paste from another file.
    • Insert Merge Field
      • Wherever you want something from the list to appear in the letter, select it from this menu. For example, if you want the student's first name to appear after the word "Dear," You would type "Dear" and then select FIRST_NAME from the Insert Merge Field menu to put a placeholder for the name right after the word Dear.
    • When you have all of your merge fields placed correctly in the letter, click Preview results to see what the merged records will look like.
      • Use the forward and back arrows to check several records to make sure things have merged correctly
    • Click Finish & Merge to either
      • Merge results directly to the printer (or)
      • Merge to a new file that you can save. This new file will have a new page(s) for each record in the list that you merged.